Fahmida Y. RashidGoDaddy Online StoreGoDaddy has trumped its own older Quick Shopping Cart software with more features, an easy-to-use dashboard, and attractive designs. Unfortunately, this up-and-comer is still missing many of the basics its competitors already have.

GoDaddy has trumped its own older Quick Shopping Cart software with more features, an easy-to-use dashboard, and attractive designs. Unfortunately, this up-and-comer is still missing many of the basics its competitors already have.

THIS REVIEW IS [301'd to 355900]

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When it comes to online shopping, customers just want to browse through product lists, select items, and then pay for everything at once with a credit card. Thanks to online shopping cart software, small businesses can easily build this capability into their websites, but some let you do a little bit more customization than others. GoDaddy Online Store ($29.99 per month) is a more-modern version of its own older GoDaddy Quick Shopping Cart, giving merchants an easy-to-use dashboard, attractive themes, and the ability to add custom features to the storefront. While support is unparalleled—this is GoDaddy, after all—Online Store is still a newcomer to the space and it shows. Our Editors' Choice winners for shopping cart software, Pinnacle Cart and Shopify, offer more out of the box.

For this review, I signed up with the free trial to set up a brand-new store on a temporary URL generated by GoDaddy. In order to put my store on my own domain, I would need to register a domain separately within GoDaddy and then come back to the Online Store interface. The costs of domain registration and an SSL certificate aside, Online Store costs $29.99 per month.

Pricing DetailsIn fact, unlike Shopify or Pinnacle Cart, GoDaddy Online Store has only one plan and only one price: $29.99 per month. There are no higher tiers to get extra features or remove restrictions. This simplifies the process tremendously because there is no mental debate involved in trying to decide which feature you really need. GoDaddy offers an impressive 30-day free trial—no measly 14-day or 15-day trials here. X-Cart offers a month-long trial for its X-Cart 5 Business, but that shopping cart software is a whole different beast from Online Store. On top of this already-generous trial, GoDaddy also offers refunds. If you are paying month-to-month, you have 48 hours to cancel and get your money back. If you are paying annually, you have a 15-day grace period. Considering 3dcart is the only other shopping cart to offer refunds, GoDaddy Online Store really stands apart from the competition when it comes to making sure you're satisfied.

Like Shopify, Online Store charges transaction fees. GoDaddy Online Store charges the same fees as Shopify's Basic plan—30 cents and 2.9 percent per transaction—but Shopify lets you move up to more expense tiers that charge lower fees. This means on a $100 order, you owe GoDaddy $3.20, and that's independent of transaction fees charged by the payment processor for every credit card transaction. It's pretty much up to you whether you prefer to have bandwidth limits or transaction fees. Bandwidth limits restrict how many products you can list and how much site traffic your shopping cart can handle. This means you have to keep track of your monthly site traffic, optimize pages to ensure you aren't loading up too many big images, and perform other tweaks to keep bandwidth costs under control. On the other hand, if you aren't selling in enough volume, having to pay 2.9 percent on each order can ding your bottom line pretty significantly. If you don't want bandwidth limits or transaction fees, you can upgrade to BigCommerce Pro plan with no restrictions or fees, or check out self-managed carts from Magento, X-Cart, or Ecwid.

If you decide you don't like GoDaddy Online Store, make sure to cancel your account before the trial ends. You can't sign up for the Online Store without a valid credit card, so if you don't cancel within that 10-day window, GoDaddy will automatically charge your card. Thankfully, GoDaddy does offer those refunds I mentioned earlier, and 10 days is plenty of time to test the store and make sure you have everything you need.

Setting Up a GoDaddy Online StoreAs I mentioned, you need a valid credit card to start the free trial, which is old-school. Shopify and Pinnacle Cart offer free trials without credit cards, so GoDaddy's way of locking in users this way feels unnecessary. The sign-up process is straightforward—name, email address, and billing information. If you already have a domain registered through GoDaddy, you will see the option to set up the shopping cart on your domain, or as a sub-domain. Otherwise, GoDaddy generates a temporary URL on the mysimplestore.com domain.

GoDaddy could put in better help text here. I didn't have the option to set up a domain name and had no inkling that the option wasn't available because I didn't have a GoDaddy-owned domain. I had expected domain registration to be integrated with the store setup process, much as BigCommerce offers. I also didn't realize that GoDaddy won't let you use a domain managed by a different domain registrar. You will need to move your domain over to GoDaddy in order to use it with your Online Store. Note, I am not talking about moving the website to GoDaddy Web hosting. GoDaddy doesn't need to be your Web host—just your domain registrar.

The dashboard is simple and straightforward. It's not as elegant as Shopify or Pinnacle Cart's dashboards, but it's more modern than GoDaddy Quick Shopping Cart, and it's easier to use than 3dcart. GoDaddy Online Store's inteface is intuitive and uncluttered, making it really welcoming for small merchants. The first thing you see is the Getting Started checklist, which is a straightforward list of all the things you need to do before you are ready to start selling. Each of the items, Business Information, Products, Payments, Shipping, Tax, and Store Design, correspond to a menu item, but it's easier to go through the list rather than to go through the menus. The menus are easy to navigate, though, with Sales, Products, Store Design, Settings, and Promote all separated into their own tabs. You can complete the Getting Started tasks in any order, and you can always return to the list. Once an item is complete, it gets checked off with a green checkmark. Visually, it's an easy map to follow.

Business Information is where you list the domain for your shopping cart as well as basic details, such as phone number, email, and the currency you accept. This is also the page on which you enter a keyword-friendly name for your store and a description to help with search engine rankings.

Add Products lets you enter product name, description, category, and inventory options such as shipping, pricing, and size/color variations. You can also let GoDaddy Online Store track inventory for you. You can upload up to 10 images per product, but don't forget that image-heavy sites can slow down your customers' shopping experience. You can list products but not have them show up on the site yet, and you can also rewrite product names to be more search engine friendly. Like BigCommerce, GoDaddy Online Store puts various options under tabs, keeping the page clean and easier to organize. I wished there was an option to import and export product lists, such as what Pinnacle Cart offers. You can search and sort products and orders to make it easier to find relevant information on the screen.

GoDaddy offers free themes that are mobile-optimized, clean, and attractive. There aren't as many as Shopify or BigCommerce, and the Online Store lacks a library like Magento's. If you are looking for eye-catching designs, Shopify remains your best bet, but GoDaddy has some nice choices. A site editor lets you customize the theme, and you can set up features like image carousels to make your site more functional. There is also a custom module that lets you inject code for additional functionality. Don't touch that module unless you know what you are doing, however. If you plan to sell on Facebook, you can also use the Facebook Page Designer to put together your store page. You can create some static pages, such as an About Me page, but there is no built-in blog platform such as Shopify offers.

GoDaddy Online Store doesn't yet have a lot of integration with third-party products. BigCommerce lets you expand its already robust feature set with add-ons such as recurring billing and loyalty programs. The only thing Online Store lets you do is hook into GoDaddy Bookkeeping, which is a separate, paid, add-on. The older GoDaddy Quick Shopping Cart at least lets you sign up for GoDaddy's blog module (also a separate paid add-on). If you want email marketing, basic customer-relationship management, or blogs, you will need to cobble these pieces together separately. You can, however, offer discounts and coupons, which Shopify doesn't. You can also add reviews so that customers can write about the products. While you can sell on Facebook, there isn't any eBay integration. You can integrate with Google Analytics for site analytics but GoDaddy Online Store doesn't have any built-in reports like 3dcart offers.

Customer Experience & PaymentsI found the user experience easy and seamless as a customer trying to buy the product and as the seller managing the transaction. Online Store does not let customers create an account and log in before being submitting an order. But everything else was straightforward. There is a real-time shipping calculator from USPS and figuring out shipping and discounts is straightforward with Online Store.

GoDaddy Online Store is already set up with PayPal Express out of the box. To accept credit cards, you need to turn on Stripe, the payment gateway GoDaddy integrated into Online Store. This is the same service powering BigCommerce's payment gateway. Stripe generally charges 2.9 percent transaction rate and a 30-cent fee per transaction. To get going with Stripe, you will need your email address, Tax Identification Number, and bank details. With Online Store, you don't have a choice of using First Data, Authorize.NET, or any of the other popular payment gateways. It's Stripe, or you can turn on alternate payments such as pay-by-phone, bank transfer, and checks.

GoDaddy has stellar customer support, and if you are a small merchant who doesn't want to struggle with the software, you need a human being to answer the phone, no matter what time it is. That's what GoDaddy is known for. For the more-ambitious troubleshooter, the service's comprehensive Knowledgebase is easy to search, but it is jumbled up with help articles for other GoDaddy products, so finding the right page can be a little overwhelming. It's easier to just call, and I never doubted I was getting the best support possible whenever I reached out for telephone support, regardless of the time.

Up and ComingSimplicity is critical when it comes to setting up an online store. You don't have time as a merchant to focus on tweaking and managing your store. You want to be fulfilling orders and making or acquiring or marketing the products you sell. In that sense, GoDaddy Online Store nails it for small merchants. But if you are planning to grow, or you've already been selling for a while, you will run up against its limitations pretty quickly. Feature-wise, it's clear GoDaddy is going after Shopify, one of our Editors' Choices award-winners for shopping cart software. For the moment, however, Pick Shopify for better themes and its choice of payment gateways. Pinnacle Cart is our other Editors' Choice because it has better product-management capabilities. If you are just getting started, however, you won't go wrong with GoDaddy Online Store, especially if you are already a GoDaddy customer, but there's always a good chance you'll outgrow the service's capabilities before new features are added.

GoDaddy Online Store

Bottom Line: GoDaddy has trumped its own older Quick Shopping Cart software with more features, an easy-to-use dashboard, and attractive designs. Unfortunately, this up-and-comer is still missing many of the basics its competitors already have.

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About the Author

Fahmida Y. Rashid is a senior analyst for business at PCMag.com. She focuses on ways businesses can use technology to work efficiently and easily. She is paranoid about security and privacy, and considers security implications when evaluating business technology. She has written for eWEEK, Dark Reading, and SecurityWeek covering security, core Inte... See Full Bio

GoDaddy Online Store

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